Optimus Prime Costume for my 3 year old son

Dancin_Fool

Well-Known Member
So I started working on the designs for my son's Halloween costume a few months ago.

First he wanted to be Bumblebee, and it had to transform. So I set about designing a Bumblebee costume. The idea would be that the vehicle mode would be a single piece that could be worn that would drag along slightly behind him and allow him to quickly transform by just kneeling down, the parts essentially coming around him. He would then have a few bot mode parts that would be attached and worn on his arms and legs.
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The more he got into Transformers though, he changed his mind and decided it had to be Optimus Prime. He's a big fan of Rescue Bots, the latest kids series for Transformers. In that series Optimus Prime is a triple changer and can transform between a truck and a dinosaur. He of course wanted a dino mode as well, but we veto'ed that one, lol.
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The first thing I did was to start building the cardboard shell for the truck mode piece, to make sure this was all plausible. My plan is to use bungee's to keep the sides of the truck up while he's in bot mode. When he kneels down the back bed of the truck swings out and he pulls the sides in to finish the transformation.
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I started unfolding the parts using the Armorsmith Costume Design tool I've been working on. ( I'll release the files once I'm done in case anyone else would like to build one for their kids. )
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I'm currently racing to finish building all the bot mode parts this week so I can focus on the truck parts and mechanics next week. It'll be tight but I should be able to get it done.
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Thanks gothic!

I made more progress over the weekend. I finished building the robot mode parts which are the calves, thighs, and forearms. I tried doing a test suit up of the parts. My son doesn't quite realize he can bend his knees with the calves on so he was just walking around with straight legs. I think I can solve that if I mount the calves to some boots. Then it will hopefully feel more like an oversize boot and make him a bit more comfortable.

Next up are the truck parts. I have the front of the cab cut out. I'm hoping to get it all glued together tonight.

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Thanks, there's so much talent on this board. There's going to be a whole generation of kids running around with wild costumes.
more to the point, theres a whole load of kids getting the headstart in this hobby many of us missed out on. I sure wish I found this while I was in my teens instead of my 30's
 
Some more progress from Sunday night. I constructed the foam front of the truck. I need to take this and skin it to the front of the cardboard shell. Though I think I might need to make some mods to the cardboard shell, it looks like it's scaled up a bit more than it should be. I'm really digging the results from sanding all the joined edges after gluing. It really helps to hide any flaws from gluing the foam together. It's going to make my life way easier when I start putting all the filler in the seams.

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More progress! I started skinning the cab of the truck on to the cardboard frame. I noticed I'm going to have to rework the sides of the truck a little bit to make room for the forearms when it transforms. All in all I'm really happy with how this is shaping up though. I should be able to start on the sealing and finishing this weekend, painting during the week, and ready to roll out for Halloween!

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I managed to survive the weekend. It looks like I'm in good shape to finish this for Halloween as long as nothing goes wrong.

For the wheels I decided to 3d print the wheel rims and make the tires out of foam. Here's a shot of the first one I printed. One down, 5 to go.
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I wanted to make sure all the mechanics would work. While I do like the looks of the pencils I'll be swapping those out for wood dowels in the final costume lol. The sides have a hinge at the top and the bungee that runs through the side pulls it up when my son is in bot mode. The back has a similar hinge and swings down to drag behind the costume. Both the sides and the back are removable so if they get too heavy for him we can remove him and he can just wear the cab and the robot parts. it's all also one piece so that means quick removal for pee breaks. I really had to think all this stuff through to make it kid friendly.
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The first finish wheel. I was really happy with how the tread came out.
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I didn't have time to do a proper pass filling all the little defects. I decided to just pick the worst offenders and get those filled as best I could. At the end of the day a little seam line really isn't going to matter to a 3 year old.
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The Rescue Bots version of Optimus Prime has an Autobot symbol in between the windshield. I decided given the time that I'd be better off 3D printing the symbol rather than try to make one out of foam.
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All the foam parts of the tires cut out! It took around 2 hours per wheel to print out the rim on the 3d printer. That wound up being the bottle neck in the wheel building in process. It wasn't too bad though, gave me time to assemble the foam wheels.
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I added a bunch of details to the back of the truck. The large area that hides my son's legs still needs some love. I might just run some tubing down the length of it and paint in some extra greeblie bits.
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Now that I had all the parts built I wanted to do a quick test to see how everything looked together. I slapped a little duct tape on the parts so I could see how they're going to look in the final costume. Not too shabby.
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Now the last piece of the puzzle was the helmet. It's attached to a panel on the top of the cab and folds down in truck mode similar to the Powermaster Prime toy. I had a model I made for pep but I really wanted it to be as small as I could make it so it folds up nicely. So I decided to just scratch build it. I wrapped a few pieces of foam around my son's head to get the sizing right and then went to town. Here was the result of a night's work.
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Now here we are, I took this photo last night. All the pieces have been heat sealed and then a few coats of PVA + water. I managed to get the first coat of primer on all of them. I'll be finishing the paint tonight and then tomorrow I'll do a little weathering and assembly. My garage is a mess, so many old costumes lying around.
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It was a very busy week trying to get the costume finished up! I managed to get the last of it finished up on Wednesday night so my son could wear it to his daycare party on Thursday. The end result was fantastic, I was really happy with how the costume came out and my son was really excited to wear it. It was a big hit at his daycare!

Halloween night didn't go quite as well. I think he was a little over tired and didn't really want to wear the costume. I wasn't about to force him lol so he just went out in the legs and forearms. He had lots of fun trick or treating and wound up with a good haul.

Here's the last couple photos from the build:

First up myself, I clearly wasn't going to have time to do something for myself I needed to come up with a quick costume. I decided to make a Spike/Sparkplug costume, the humans from G1 transformers. I picked up the clothes from value village and some black boots from walmart. The boots I covered with yellow plastidip and I went over the clothes with a black paint pen to give them a more animated look.
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Back to Optimus Prime! I painted all the parts with a base glossy paint. Then for the cab I painted the white and black areas with acrylics. Once that was dry I went over the corners with a dry brush of silver acrylic to add some of the weathering effects. The last step was to rub a little watered down black paint to get the final weathered effect.
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Masking off and painting the sides of the truck.
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I was really happy with how the back of the truck looked with the wheels glued on. Added a little tubing as well for some extra detail.
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Truck mode all finished up.
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Here's all the parts of the costume finished up. I had to stay up til 3 in the morning to get all the parts painted but it was so worth it.
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He was so excited to be in the costume.
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Not a perfect transformation but I'll teach him with time. That's what dad's are for lol.
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Thanks!

I should have the files up either this week or next for anyone that wants to a build for themselves or their kids lol.
 
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